The iPhone 7 features a barometric vent, which sits exactly where the headphone jack lived in the iPhone 6. The vent helps the barometric pressure sensor obtain an accurate reading while keeping the phone water proof. [Scotty] wasn’t worried about waterproofing, as he was cutting a hole through the case. The vent was out, replaced with a carefully modified headphone jack.

The next step was convincing the phone to play analog signals. For this, [Scotty] used parts from Apple’s own headphone adapter. The hard part was making all of this work and keeping the lightning port available. The key was a digital switch chip. Here’s how the circuit works:

When no headphone is plugged in, data is routed from the iPhone’s main board to the lightning port. When headphones are plugged in, the data lines are switched to the headphone adapter. Unfortunately, this means the phone can’t play music and charge at the same time — that is something for version 2.0.

The real journey in this video is watching [Scotty] work to fit all these parts inside an iPhone case. The design moved from a breadboard through several iterations of prototype printed circuit boards. The final product is built using a flexible PCB – the amber-colored Kapton and copper sandwiches that can be found in every mobile device these days.

I don't even have time (right now) to watch the vid! Where/how does this guy find the time, not to mention the money, to do this?! I can only surmise that he is an engineer of some company and has a lot of free time. He also seems to have access to all the technical manuals needed to understand the purpose of every trace on the logic board an the integrated chips! Anyway, gotta run, I'll hopefully finish the vid in less time than he took to complete the project!

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I DREAM OF A SOCIETYwhere a chicken can cross the roadwithout having its motives questioned.Signals, holiday 2014